Hang on Startup

[codemer]

Shortly after upgrading to Storyist 1.2, Storyist started hanging on startup (before displaying the new document dialog). I tried downgrading to 1.2b3, and it still hangs. Reinstalled 1.2, and it still hangs.

 

No messages appear on the console.

 

I recall that there is a directory somewhere that may contain document templates, and I wonder if there is corrupt data there. Where should I look?

 

OS X 10.4.9, PPC.

 

Dead in the water,

IF

[Steve]

Shortly after upgrading to Storyist 1.2, Storyist started hanging on startup (before displaying the new document dialog). I tried downgrading to 1.2b3, and it still hangs. Reinstalled 1.2, and it still hangs.

 

No messages appear on the console.

 

I recall that there is a directory somewhere that may contain document templates, and I wonder if there is corrupt data there. Where should I look?

 

OS X 10.4.9, PPC.

 

Dead in the water,

IF

 

Hi Isaac,

 

As you probably guessed, the fact that you aren't getting to the new document dialog means that there is an initialization problem somewhere (fortunately or maybe not, there have been very few changes in the init code from release to release).

 

The first thing to do is disable any haxies (Silk, Menu Master, TextExtras etc...) and see if your situation improves. I'd be interested to hear of any conflicts you find.

 

If you have saved any custom templates, they would be in ~/Library/Application Support/Storyist/Templates. Templates are not opened at initialization time, though, only enumerated for the template dialog, so it is unlikely that they are affecting your launch.

 

Another thing to try would be to move aside your preferences file (~/Library/Preferences/com.storyist.storyist.plist) and relaunch.

 

-Steve

[codemer]

As you probably guessed, the fact that you aren't getting to the new document dialog means that there is an initialization problem somewhere (fortunately or maybe not, there have been very few changes in the init code from release to release).

 

The first thing to do is disable any haxies (Silk, Menu Master, TextExtras etc...) and see if your situation improves. I'd be interested to hear of any conflicts you find.

 

If you have saved any custom templates, they would be in ~/Library/Application Support/Storyist/Templates. Templates are not opened at initialization time, though, only enumerated for the template dialog, so it is unlikely that they are affecting your launch.

 

Another thing to try would be to move aside your preferences file (~/Library/Preferences/com.storyist.storyist.plist) and relaunch.

 

Steve,

The problem now appears to be intermittent. I was able to start Storyist tonight without changing anything. To date, I've tried killing QuickSilver, rebooting, and having nothing open at all. The odd thing is that when Storyist starts, it seems to work consistently for the next few minutes. When I come back later and try to start it, it hangs (menu shows and stuck on flying saucer, virtually no CPU usage). I had QuickSilver, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Adium open when I last launched Storyist successfully.

 

At a loss,

IF

[Steve]

Steve,

The problem now appears to be intermittent. I was able to start Storyist tonight without changing anything. To date, I've tried killing QuickSilver, rebooting, and having nothing open at all. The odd thing is that when Storyist starts, it seems to work consistently for the next few minutes. When I come back later and try to start it, it hangs (menu shows and stuck on flying saucer, virtually no CPU usage). I had QuickSilver, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Adium open when I last launched Storyist successfully.

 

At a loss,

IF

 

Another thing to try might be to do a fresh install of Storyist (from the DMG) in another user account and run it from there. This would eliminate any preferences, permissions, or input manager issues.

 

-Steve

[Steve]

For the archives:

 

Isaac and I have been trying to track this down offline--so far with no luck.

 

I've just been trying to figure out if there's a program that conflicts

with Storyist, unsuccessfully. Had all the heavy weights running, like

google earth, pages, keynote, firefox, X11, etc, using over 14 GB of

virtual memory in around 30 applications. The worst it did was make

Storyist take a little longer to start up. I repeatedly started

Storyist with each new application. The other day, I was seeing startup

hangs that lasted upwards of 20 minutes before I killed the process.

 

Conclusion? Probably not third party process related.

 

...

 

The most suspicious thing I noticed about the hang was that there was no

cpu usage. Could it be waiting for some sort of input?

 

I'll let you know if it happens again.

 

If you run across this problem, I would be very interested to know:

• What version of Storyist you are using.
  
• What version of OS X you are using (version number and PPC or Intel).
  
• What, if anything is listed on the console (which you can find in /Applications/Utilities/Console).
  
• If you have any network drives mounted.
  
• If you have autosave enabled and there are any autosaved stories (files with the suffix "(Autosave)") in the save folder as your story.
  

[Steve E]

Isaac,

 

Please forgive my stating the obvious, but, if you've done a full re-install of Storyist, shut down all your new (i.e., installed after the last Storyist beta) code and it still hangs when you open a new Storyist file, and others (me, Steve, etcetera) aren't having this problem, you could be a redneck...er...infected with a virus

 

Consider checking if you've installed all the offered Mac Security updates. Then update your own security software (I use Norton AntiVirus) and scan your hard disk for infection.

 

Since a virus that only works against Storyist is a longshot you might consider testing non-heavyweights Apple Works, Text Edit and Stickies for hanging problems. If any of these products hang you can be sure you have a virus...or the capacitor plague (see Wikipedia).

 

Good luck.

[Steve]

Please forgive my stating the obvious, but, if you've done a full re-install of Storyist, shut down all your new (i.e., installed after the last Storyist beta) code and it still hangs when you open a new Storyist file, and others (me, Steve, etcetera) aren't having this problem, you could be a redneck...er...infected with a virus

 

I don't think the hang Isaac was seeing is the result of a virus, not because of the relative scarcity of them on Mac OS X, but because of the way it "presents" (to use some medical jargon ):

• There are no messages in the console, which means that Storyist did not take an exception (a sign of a logic or coding error).
  
• When it is hung, the application is not using any CPU cycles.
  

It is most likely that Storyist is waiting for some system resource (e.g. a file). This may be the result of a bug in Storyist or in the underlying OS. If it is the first, naturally I want to fix it. If it is the second, I'd like to try to find a work around. The key will be finding a way to reproduce it. As you point out, few people have seen it, but like the Loch Ness Monster, just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

So if you catch this one on tape (so to speak), please reply to the thread with details.

 

-Steve

[pjl]

This happened to me, but I was using the beta 9A466 (I think) of Leopard. It would hang intermittently and when it opened all templates were inaccessible except for Blank. I don't know if that's any help and I'm sorry I can't repeat the process as I've reinstalled Tiger and Storyist is working fine this end. Hope you all find a resolution to the problem.

 

PJ

[codemer]

Just to beat a dead horse, I've still experienced this intermittently. The only consistency is that if Storyist hangs on startup, 1) it will eventually start, 2) the hang is reproducible for a period of time, usually an hour or two.

 

This jives with completely unrelated problems I've had at work lately that were all caused by the network, namely DNS. Is it possible that Storyist sometimes gets stuck while checking for an update on startup, and the timeout is just really really long?

 

IF